TOURIST IN AFRICA

By EVELYN WAUGH (Illustrated by Quentin Blake)

(3) Zanzibar—Kongwa

Zanzibar—Dar-es-Salaatn—Kilwa—the corona- tion of Bishop homer A. Tomlinson—safari- groundnuts February 19. Zanzibar.

There has been a change in the character of the passengers. The missionaries and officials and many of the young men going to work got off at Mombasa and were replaced by holiday- , makers, many of them from remote Kenyan farms who come down for a few days' cruise to enjoy a change of diet and of company.

We anchored off Zanzibar at dawn. A day of fierce heat. The island is said to enjoy a cool season. I have .never struck it. An hour's stroll ashore sufficed to revive old memories; then I retired to the ship for a cold bath and an after- noon under the electric fans.

To elderly Englishmen Zanzibar is most famous for the great Bloomsbury rag, when Virginia Woolf and her friends inspected an English man-of-war at Portsmouth in the guise of the Sultan and his entourage, and for Bishop Weston's occupation of the Anglican see. Weston was the hero of many sermons in Lancing chapel and his cathedral, built on the site of the old slave market, is the symbol of British beneficence in East Africa. Weston it was who, just before the First World War, threatened a schism in the Church of England by delating his neigh- bouring bishops for collaboration with noncon- formists. Readers of Ronald Knox's A Spiritual Aeneid will remember the intense excitement of his coterie about the incident which, he said, the Lambeth committee found 'eminently pleasing to God and on no account to be repeated.'

The Cathedral has a rather forlorn appearance today. One clergyman presides where there was a 'mess' of six. The main activities of the mission are now on the mainland and the historic' little edifice has, with its brass plates commemorating British officials, the air of a Riviera chaplaincy. No church has made much progress in this last of the Arab sultanates. Eighty years ago it was hoped that a province was being added to Chris- tendom. British rule has merely created an Indian settlement.

It was ironic, too, to find notices in the ship and on the quay requesting European ladies to respect local susceptibilities by dressing modestly. Shades of Mrs. Jellyby and of al! the sewing parties who used to make `Mother-Hubbard' gowns to clothe the naked heathen ! The French are said to be the most shameless tourists. Unless turned back by the police they parade the bazaar in bikini bathing dresses There are no beggars or touts in Zanzibar. The. narrow lanes are clean and fragrant and shaded. I saw no changes except that the fort has been tidied and made public. It is a very pretty town. Few buildings are more than 150 years old but all arc built in the traditional fashion of plastered rubble, painted and repainted, with here and there delicate blue washes relieving the mottled white, with carved doors and hidden gardens, and the streets wander along the paths first traced by pack animals. Besides the usual trash for tourists there are genuine Arab and African antiquities to be found in the shops. The money-changers have vanished, who used to produce from their leather bags gold pieces struck all over the world and still current, priced by weight, whenever the Arab dhows put in port A few trousered figures flick wads of escudo:: under the noses of passengers bound for Mozambique, where vener- able, turbaned obesities once squatted by their scales. There is still no tourists' hotel. Magicians still frequent the north island of Pemba—coming from as far as the lakes for their final schools in the black art. The reigning Sultan suceeded in 1911 and has been on his throne longer than any living ruler. His subjects have no nationality, part Arab, part Indian, part Swahili; British admin- istration is pure, effective and benevolent. No doubt we shall soon read in the papers about 'Zanzibar Nationalism' and colonial tyranny.

What I read in the papers now, at the moment of writing, is this: One of Zanzibar's tourist attractions -the old stone town with its narrow streets and houses with intricately-carved Arab doors--is to be cleared partially to provide improved living conditions. The inhabitants will be moved to new areas where proper amenities can be provided.

Part of the cleared area will be used for the development of warehouse space in the port area to encourage the establishment of new industries essential to the island's economy. The estimated cost of the scheme, which ensures the balanced progress of housing, com- munications, commerce, industry, educatfon, and all community services, is £258,000. but only £58,000 can be allocated because of the lack of funds.

The last sentence is comforting.

February 20. Dar-es-Salaam at dawn.

I made a grateful leave-taking from the Rhodesia Castle, where I had recovered from all the malaises of the English winter, and landed in extreme heat in Tanganyika. Dar-es-Salaam, too, has its cool. season during the English summer. Its most loyal .citizen could not claim that the climate in February is pleasant. Nor that the city has much to divert the sightseer; less 1113n Mombasa, which it somewhat resembles; no Fort Jesus, no Star Bar. It is a port, a railhead and the seat of government—unlike Mombasa it is IN capital city, a distinction which means more every year as political institutions multiply. Its suburbs extend along pleasant beaches. There is sailing and fishing and a hospitable British society Tanganyika is a pure bureaucracy; the number of officials has doubled since 1945; they attempt to run a Welfare State on an exiguous budget. They regard themselves as temporary caretakers who will quite soon hand over their responsibili:• ties to natives. The head of the 'Nationalist' movement, Mr. Nycrere, is universally well spoken of (though 'nationality' in a people 35 heterogeneous as those arbitrarily assigned to the territory has less meaning there than almost anY' where in the world). There are very few white settlers of the sort that abound in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, a few farmers mostlY industrious Boers, round Arusha, a few reputedlY eccentric English of the old 'Happy Valley' kind in the Southern Highlands. There are a few sisal estates owned by Greeks. and Swiss. Over great areas the tsetse fly keeps man away. The great European settlement was made by the Germans at the turn of the century. They were evicted in the First World War. In the Thirties the Germans began to return. They were very, uppish, openly making lists of chiefs they would hang when Hitler recovered the land for them. (It was never properly part of the British Empire but territory held under mandate of the League Of Nations.) In 1937 it seemed quite probable he would succeed. The history of Africa and perhaps of Europe would have beep very different had he done so. In September, 1939, the British authorities neatly arrested the lot, taking them quite by surprise, and interned them for the duration of the war. There are very few of them in the territory now. Whenever one finds a build- ing of any attraction it usually turns out to be German.

One of these was the Club where I was kindly lodged. It stands on the sea front behind a broad terrace. In the time of the German occupation it had a beerhall, skittle-alley and an adjoining brothel. Now there is instead an excellent library. There are a very few air-conditioned offices in Dar-es-Salaam. The older buildings are designed to catch the breeze. The Dar-es-Salaam Club is solidly built with much fine joinery in dark African timber and heavy brass fittings on doors and windows. In the days I spent there I spent many hours sitting under the fans, sipping lime- juice (curiously enough limes are. almost un- procurable in Tanganyika outside the capital. The hotel managers say, as they do in England, that there is 'no demand' for them) and reading the best-sellers of the last decade. It was very much like being back on board ship. At sundown the Club came to life. Tables were set out on the terrace. Women appeared. Sometimes a band Played. Shorts gave place to suits. During the day the officials, who are the main White population, wear white shorts and open shirts, looking like grotesquely overgrown little boys who have not yet qualified for the first eleven at their private schools. Those who wish to add a touch of dandyism to this unimposing uniform sport monocles. I wonder how much the loss of European prestige in hot countries is connected with the craven preference for comfort over dignity.

At Dar-es-Salaam I met the ex-Sapper to whom I had originally carried an introduction, and who at 400 miles range had befriended me in Mombasa. He received me with urbane warmth. I Will call him R. To him and to Mr. Thompson, the agent of the Union Castle Line, were due almost all the pleasure and interest of my weeks In the territory.

Saturday, February 21. A policeman has been Murdered in the suburbs because his neighbours thought a witch was enjoying police protection. That, at least, is the current story. I saw a great Customs shed full of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns, all for export to India. In order to discour- age Poaching, which none the less is prevalent, a is forbidden to work ivory in Tanganyika. The elephant tusks fetch 18s a pound, the rhino horns 61:1s. Most of the latter are eventually sent to Inflame the passions of theChinese. February 22. Mass at the Cathedral (another German building) very full, mostly of brilliantly end/munches Goans, a few natives, hardly a white face to be seen.

R drove me out to Bagamoyo, forty-five miles up the coast, to lunch with the government archmologist. In R's Mercedes-Benz we covered the very bad road in an hour and a half. Word had gone before me of my zest for ruined mosques. There arc two—one mediaeval, the Other of the eighteenth century—some little dis- tance from the present town, which is an dir ee- able decrepit nineteenth-century place, part German colonial, part Arab-slaver, with the spurious air of greater antiquity typical of the coast. The archaeologist has a charming house built in the traditional materials—a sharp con- . trast to a row of mean concrete villas lately erected for official occupation by the Public Works Department. Bagamoyo was the starting-point of most of the missionaries and explorers of the last century. The Germans made it their headquarters before they developed Dar-es-Salaam.

On the road back vie passed a village dance. They would keep it up far into the night, drink- ing and drumming; a jolly, social party not like the ngomas I used to see, which always had a hint of magic and, it seemed, of menace.

February 23. I do not regret my • insincere expression of interest in mediaeval Arab ruins. It has taken me to some delightful places and intro- duced me to delightful people. Today I booked to fly to Kilwa. My resolution to eschew aero- planes—like Belloc's to eschew trains on the Path to Rome—has had to be broken. The road is impassable at this season; a steamship plies from Mombasa, but to take that would have extended the expedition by some three weeks and inflicted a visit of unbearable length on my kind hosts— for there is no hotel. Visitors must either bivouac or impose themselves as guests on the District Commissioner. So prejudice, now and later, had to be put aside and at noon I stepped into the suffocating little machine (which of course was late) bearing what I was told would be acceptable, a leg of mutton frozen, when I put it in the rack, to the consistency of granite but soft as putty when I presented it to my hostess.

My destination is some 200 miles down the coast from Dar. There are three Kilwas—the island of Kilwa Kisiwani, all ruins now and a few huts; the sleepy little nineteenth-century town of Kilwa Kivinje, Arab and German built, eighteen miles to the north on the mainland; and Kilwa Masoko, the new boma, or administrative station, to which I was bound. The aeroplane stopped at Mafia Island, a flat grove of coconut and man- grove which attracts deep-sea fishermen. We passed the Rufigi delta where the wreck of a Ger- ' man warship has lain visible for forty• years. The Kilwa airstrip is near the boma. Here I was met by the District Commissioner and his wife and carried off to their house. His isolated position gives him a larger measure of freedom from bureaucratic interference than is enjoyed by any of his colleagues in Tanganyika. With the help of two young district officers he governs 3,000 square miles of territory. Inland, it is said, there are more elephants than taxpayers; the few villages are visited on foot in the old colonial style. There are three European bungalows at Kilwa Masoko, an office, a school, two Indian shops and a pier. It is to this pier that the boma owes its existence for in the heady days of the 'Groundnuts Scheme' it was designed to be the railhead for the produce of the still virgin bush. The DC himself is one of the few benefits of that scheme; the 'ground- nutters' have a low reputation, largely I gather deserved, but there was among them an appreci- able number of zealous and efficient officers from the army who came out full of the faith that they would be doing something to help feed the victims of the war. These were the first to realise that the scheme was fatuous; some returned to England, others, of whom my host was one, remained in Tanganyika to do valuable work in other services. His wife and he arc an exhilarating couple, both devoted to their large, lonely territory, without any regrets for the social amenities of the towns.

February 24. A narrow channel separates the boma from the island of Kilwa Kisiwani. We crossed early in the morning by motor-launch, embarking at the pier and wading ashore up the sandy beach. Once the Sultan of Kilwa ruled from Mafia in the north to Sofala (near the modern Beira) 900 miles to the south. It was by far the greatest of the East African sultanates. Now, with its neighbouring islands of Songo Mnara and Sanji ya Kati, it is inhabited by a few families of fishermen. The Persians probably came here first and set up a dynasty in the tenth century. It was under the Arabs of Oman that the place became great. The Portuguese came there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 1589 the Zimba ate all the inhabitants and left a waste that was irregularly reoccupied. Once, in the eighteenth century, it recovered some prosperity, again under the Oman Arabs. It then declined steadily until the last sultan was deported by the Sultan of Zanzibar in the middle of the last century.

Archeologists, notably Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Fr. Gervase Matthew, have lately paid pro- fessional attention to the district. There is plenty to delight the mere sightseer.

A very faint, inexpungible tinge of luxury lingers in this desolate island. The goats and the few tiny cows which pasture there have made glades and open spaces of parkland between the trees whose flowers scent the steamy air as though in a Rothschild's greenhouse; gaudy little birds flash and call as they used in the aviary at Hackwood. Phrases from Tennyson's Alcaics come uncertainly and not entirely aptly to mind. 'Me, rather, all that bowery loveliness'; there are no 'brooks of Eden mazily murmuring' on Kilwa, nor 'cedar arches'; but 'rich ambrosial ocean isle' and 'the stately palm woods whisper in odor- ous heights of even' are exact and might have been written here.

The only man of importance is a nonagenarian dervish, on whom I was taken to call by the DC. He looked like a black Father Christmas. His chief possession is a large, carved bed which is coveted by the museum at Dar. He was not using it that morning, but was recumbent in a low chair, unable to rise to greet us, but attended by a pretty girl who carried a baby he assured us proudly was his own. I once supposed that dervishes employed themselves either in spinning like tops or in break- ing British squares, but 1 have since looked them up in the encyclopaedia and learned that the term is so wide as to be almost meaningless; they can be orthodox, pantheistic, mystical, political, ascetic, orgiastic, magical, ecstatic; they can live as members of strict communities or as hermits or nomads, medicants, scholars, revivalists— almost anything, it seems.

While the DC was exchanging politenesses in Kiswahili I noticed over our host's head a framed picture of King George VI with an inscription signed by a former Governor in the name of His Majesty 'as a record of the valuable services rendered by him to his own Country and People and to the British Government in advancing the Moslem religion.' It seemed an odd tribute from the Defender of the Faith.

On saying goodbye the genial old man produced from his bosom a hen's egg and presented it to me. That afternoon the DC's wife had a sewing class on her verandah for the few native girls of the station.

February 25. Drove to Kilwa Kivinje—well laid out, well planted, picturesque, decaying. There are no European inhabitants. An English- man sometimes visits an office where he trans- acts business in mangrove bark. He was in fact my fellow passenger from Dar and returned there with me on the next flight. An aged Swahili magistrate sat in the old German court-house. In the ramshackle little German hospital Indian doctors rather ironically displayed their meagre equipment. A few youths squatted on their door steps playing the endless and unintelligible gambling game of dropping nuts very swiftly and earnestly on a board hollowed out for them as for marbles in solitaire. No crafts survive in the town except, among the women, very simple grass matting; the ancient woodcarvers are represented by a single clumsy joiner. There are a few Indian grocers and a pleasant little market of fish and vegetables. Meat is almost unprocurable; hence my offering of frozen mutton. It was a regrettable and much regretted decision to move the boma to Masoko. Anyone having business at headquarters has a walk of nearly forty miles. There is, I think, no unofficial wheeled vehicle in the district. The DC and his wife knew everyone in the place and were plainly welcome at every door. He had lately on his own initiative repaired the sea wall, thus preserving a promenade dear to Arab social tradition.

February 26. The aeroplane came in the morn- ing to take me back to Dar. There was in it a copy of that day's East African Standard contain- ing this paragraph: 'Bishop Homer A. Tomlin- son of New York, self styled "King of the World," flew into Dar-es-Salaam last night from Salisbury. He is to crown himself King of Tanganyika today. He intends to leave the New Africa Hotel at 10 a.m. and walk around the town for two hours crowning himself on a suitable site at noon.'

This seemed a happy confirmation of the theme of Eric Rosenthal's Stars and Stripes in Africa, which had beguiled my voyage out.

We landed at eleven o'clock. Mr. Thompson met me at the aerodrome. He had not heard of Bishop Homer A. Tornlinson's assumption of sovereignty. We drove up and down the main streets of the city looking for him and making in- quiries. His progress, if it had occurred, had been unobserved. At noon we came to the New Africa Hotel. This, the leading hotel, is near the Club, separated from the water-front by a little public garden and a war memorial. In the tropic noon the place was quite empty except for half a dozen policemen and two journalists. They were waiting for the Bishop and we joined them in the scanty shade.

I expected a flamboyant figure from Harlem. Instead there presently emerged from the hotel an elderly white man dressed in a blue kimono. He was unattended and somewhat encumbered by paraphernalia. He gave no indication of expecting any kind of ovation. As purposeful and recollected as a priest going to his altar to say Mass, the Bishop shuffled across under the blazing sun, opened a folding chair and sat down in the garden. The police, the two journalists, Mr. Thompson and I collected round him. A repre- sentative of the local broadcasting organisation appeared with a tape recorder. The Bishop ignored him and like a priest or rather, perhaps, like a conjuror, began arranging his properties. He had a bible, a crown which seemed to be light and inexpensive, a flag, not—shade of Rosenthal! —the Stars and Stripes but something simple but unidentifiable of his own design of blue 'and white stars, and a bladder. The stuff of his little chair was slightly regal, a pattern of red and gold with ornamental tassels. He dropped the flag over his head as though preparing for a nap. Then he blew noisily into the bladder which proved to be an inflatable, plastic terrestrial globe. He blew hard and strong but there was a puncture some- where. It took the form of a wizened apple but not of a full sphere. Aftel a few more puffs he despaired and laid it on the ground at his feet. Then he removed the flag from his head and began to address us in calm nasal tones.

He was, he said, the acknowledged leader of the largest religious body in the world, about 100,000,000 strong to date. In 1923 he had received the call to be a bishop; in 1953 to be a king. He was the sovereign of fifty-two realms and proposed to complete his vocation by crowning himself in every State in the world including Russia. Under his simple autarchy peace would be assured to all his subjects. He then prayed for the prosperity of Tanganyika, placed the crown on his head, collected his impedimenta and retired to the New Africa Hotel.

The temperature that day was 90°, humidity 100.

From time to time in the next few weeks I had news of him. The Sultan of Zanzibar did not welcome a rival in his dominions. He was for- bidden to-crown himself there. He got to Nairobi by air but the immigration authorities of KenYa tt ( suspected him of subversive activities and would „ in not let him leave the aerodrome. They would riot fat even let him crown himself in the waiting roolll. Saturday, February 28. R has arranged his business so that I can accompany him on a long `safari'—a term now used to designate a luxurious motor tour. He has been a racing drii•er in his time and his affection for his car is tender to the point of infatuation. li is a worthy object 01 devotion, a large, new, fast and extremely cool' fortable Mercedes-Benz.

R has a fixed smile of fascination and an sit t0 of self-confidence rarely found in civil servants. fit He is a large, handsome euphoric man in early ra middle age, as near a dandy as local custom 0' allows; a late corner to the colonial service. He has—or rather had, for he has just been promoted —an office requiring great tact, patience and dis. cretion. He is in charge of 'personnel'; that is to say, of all postings in the government service; most dissensions, discontents and scandals come to him for treatment and part of his task is to make periodic tours of the 'bomas' and see that everyone is reasonably happy and sane. With us, engaged on some rather similar errand whose precise nature I never learned, is a retired brigadier; a regular soldier of imperturbable it geniality. I don't know if they enjoyed niY company. I certainly enjoyed theirs.

We set out in the early morning. If brigadiers tl have an occupational weakness it is neurotic solicitude about their baggage. Not so out tl brigadier who was blithe and carefree. Indeed. as will appear later, he was deprived of a portfolio of highly confidential documents during our tout and accepted the loss with admirable equanimity.

We drove due west up the old slave route, which, is now the path of road and railway. A road heavy, with wicked association. No one, I suppose, except a zealot of some recondite natural science, can find much pleasure in the coastal plain of East Africa. We sped where, not very long ago, we should have met the caravans of yoked and ivorY- laden captives. Plantation soon gave place to bush. It was pleasant to be out of Dar and it %%as quite joyfully that we reached Morogoro before noon. Here we lunched with the District Com- missioner. The conversation was of witchcraft, political agitation, tax-evasion, big game and secret societies—the staple, engrossing topics that greet one anywhere up-country in Africa. There is little at Morogoro except the boma, the railway station and a few Indian shops. Yes, I know. I ought to write 'Asian', Pakistanis don't like to be called 'Indian' nowadays, but I grew up with a simple vocabulary in which 'Asian' did not exist and 'Asiatic' usually meant a sinister Chinaman. I hope my book will not be banned (like the Oxford Dictionary) in Karachi as the result of my antiquated habits of speech. No offence IS intended.

There were no problems at Morogoro for K or the brigadier. We drove on refreshed, and late in the afternoon came to a huge clearing in the bush, .90,000, acres of grassland. This is all that remains of the Kongwa groundnuts plantation which twelve years ago was a topic of furious debate in London and of bitter recrimination in * Africa. The Overseas Food Corporation ceased. to exist in March, 1955. The Tanganyika Agricul- tural Corporation is now engaged in saving what= it can from the wreck. Some 9,000 head of cattle, in herds of 300, have been put in the care of Gogo families. These tribesmen have reverted to their former scanty dress and rebuilt their houses on the ancestral model, very low rectangles of mud, WO flat roofs of turf. Three veterinary and administrative officials are the only white popula- tion. The cattle are healthy and may multiply. But the Sodom apple threatens to overrun the pasture if not constantly resisted. If the experts go, the grass will go with them At my request R diverged from the main road to Visit the once populous site. It was not easy to find. The roads of Kongwa are breaking up, the railway lines have been removed, the airstrip is °vergrown. Few buildings remain and those are iuP for sale. As we drove to the only inhabited °InIgitlow an Englishman came out to ask if we had come to buy the school hall, for the final failure on this disastrous scene has been that of a secondary boarding school, the only one in Tanganyika, which that month was reopening (in the Southern Highlands) after some scandalous goings-on at Kongwa.

On a slight rise stand the empty bungalows nich were once called 'Millionaires' Row' and Street' where the high officials lived in the Intervals of flying to Dar and London; sad sheds With the weed growing high in their gardens. We made our way through the growth and peered through the windows at the empty little rooms. It was hard to conceive that they had ever been the object of derisive envy.

There are two excellent documents. The roundnut Affair by the late Alan Wood, written In 1950, and a brief retrospective paper by Mr. T. P. Seabrook, the Chief Administrative Officer of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corpora- tion, written in 1957. Wood was a loyal socialist and Public Relations Officer in the early stages of the scheme. When he wrote there still seemed a chance of growing some nuts. When Mr. Sea- brook wrote, he counted the secondary school, which was now being dismantled under our eyes, as one of the positive gains to the Territory.

There was no injustice in treating the fiasco as a matter of party politics. The scheme was con- ceived in an ideological haze, prematurely adver- tised as a specifically socialist achievement and Unscrupulously defended in London when every- one in Africa knew it was indefensible. No one at the top made a penny out of it. The officials wereunderpaid and had in some cases given up better jobs to come. I well remember the indigna- tion, some twenty years ago, of a foreign art expert who recounted tc me in great detail the transaction by which the National Gallery had acquired a painting of doubtful authenticity. 'And all of them,' he concluded in disgust, 'the Director and his committee are gentlemen of private fortune. Not one of them received even a com- mission. It could not have happened in any other country.'

Africa has seen many great financial swindles. This was not one of them. The aim was benevolent; the provision of margarine for the undernourished people of Great Britain. The fault was pride; the hubris which leads elected persons to believe that a majority at the polls endues them with inordinate abilities.

Mr. Strachey's plan was to clear 5,210,000 acres of virgin bush in 1947 which in 1950 would produce 600,000 tons of groundnuts. The total expenditure, spread over six years, was to be £24,000,000. The estimated profit was £10,000,000 a year. It does not require acute hindsight to discern something improbable in this calculation. In September, 1948, the administrative heads of departments in Kongwa submitted a report expressing dismay at the progress of the venture. This was ignored. At the end of that year £18,000,000 had been spent and current expenses were £1,000,000 a month. No considerable quantity of groundnuts was ever produced; nor was there a need for them—they were piling up in mountains in West Africa needing only transport to make them available. Altogether I believe some £40,000,000 were squandered by the Overseas Food Corporation. Rival politicians had every reason to make a row about it.

But the imagination is moved by the human elements of the story. The Labour Government conceived it as their duty as trustees of the native races to institute trades unions and sent salaried officials to teach them how to strike for higher pay. In the first year their efforts were rewarded. The Europeans working at Kongwa had to be enrolled as special constables and organised in armed patrols for the protection of themselves and their servants. Bands of African spearmen blocked the roads. The railway stopped running. The tractors lay idle. Police had to be brought in from Dodoma. The union leaders were taken to prison and the strikers' demands remained un- satisfied.

Frantic supply officials saw enormous quantities of derelict army stores accumulate at Dar from the Philippine Islands, brought in un- listed lots, the useful and the useless inextricably confused.

The site at Kongwa had been selected for its emptiness. It was empty because it was waterless.

The encampment at Kongwa housed some 2,000 men and women from Great Britain and some 30,000 natives. Their presence among the simple Wagogo came near to dissolving tribal loyalties. Their high wages put up the price of food so that natives not employed by the scheme went hungry. Many of the natives who were attracted by the high wages left their own small holdings uncultivated, so that less food was grown in the Territory than ever before. Large quantities were imported to feed those who were supposed to be exporters. It was 'even proposed to import bees into an area where bees were the principal natural terror, in order to pollinate the sunflowers (which died of drought anyway). A half of all the liquor imported into Tanganyika was consumed at Kongwa. It was a new experience for most natives to see Englishmen demonstratively drunk.

It was new, also, to see them convicted of theft.

Villages of prostitutes, who charged stupendous fees of five shillings or more, sprang up round the encampment. The hospital orderlies did an illicit trade in injections which they pretended cured syphilis. Thieves infested the stores and workshops. A firm official promise that first priority would be given to the erection of 1,000 African married quarters resulted by the end of 1948 in 200, and those inferior to what were provided by the Greek sisal planters; respectable Africans refused to move their families into them on the grounds that Kongwa was a bad address.

The equalitarian ideas of the home government found no sympathy in Africa. 'The infinitely graded social distinctions among the workers (there are seven recognised classes of Mauritians alone) came as a surprise to the English socialists. By the end of 1948 there was a turnover in the labour force of 20 per cent. per month.

The pity of it is that many of the original 'groundnutters,' like my host at Kilwa, had come out to Africa with high,-altruistic motives. These mostly left Kongwa in the first two years. It is ironical now to read what Alan Wood (who him- self resigned in protest at the obliquity of public utterances in London) wrote in 1950: 'I believe that in Africa, as in Europe, the only real reply to Communism will be Socialism. The best answer to the Africans who dream of Soviet Russia is to boast that the groundnut scheme can be as remarkable an experiment as anything done under the Five-Year Plans; that it is based on some of .

the same principles, something new in Colonial development, a huge co-operative venture not run for private profit, which will eventually be run by the people who are working for it; but which represents an advance on anything in Russia, in that large-scale economic planning is combined with political freedom.'

We turned back to the main road past traditional villages of the Wagogo. The inhabit- ants waved cheerfully, at us. The immigrants have all departed leaving them much as they were when Livingstone passed through, but the richer for some fine cattle.